The Mind and the Brain

We come to the second opinion we have formulated. It is, in appearance at least, very different from the first. Its supporters agree that the entire sensation, taken en bloc and unanalysed, is to be termed a psychological phenomenon. In this case, the act of consciousness, included in the sensation, continues to represent a psychical element. They suppose, besides, that the object on which this act operates is psychical; and finally, they suppose that this object or this impression was provoked in us by a physical reality which is kept in concealment, which we do not perceive, and which remains unknowable.

This opinion is nowise absurd in itself: but let us examine its consequences. If we admit this thesis, that sensations are manifestations of mind which, although provoked by material causes, are of a purely mental nature, we are forced to the conclusion that we know none of the properties of material bodies, since we do not enter into relations with these bodies. The object we apprehend by perception is, according to this hypothesis, solely mental. To draw therefrom any notion on material objects, it would have to be supposed that, by some mysterious action, the mental which we know resembles the physical which we do not know, that it retains the reflection of it, or even that it allows its colour and form to pass, like a transparent pellicle applied on the contour of bodies. Here are hypotheses very odd in their realism. Unless we accept them, how is it comprehensible that we can know anything whatever of physical nature? We should be forced to acknowledge, following the example of several philosophers, that the perception of the physical is an illusion.

As a compensation, that which this system takes from matter it attributes to mind, which turns our familiar conceptions upside down. The qualities of sensation detached from matter will, when applied to mind, change its physiognomy. There are sensations of extent, weight, space, and form. If these sensations are turned into psychical events, we shall have to grant to these events, to these manifestations of the mind, the properties of extent, of weight, of form. We shall have to say that mind is a resisting thing, and that it has colour.

It may be said that this fantasy of language is not very serious. So be it. But then what remains of the dualism of mind and matter? It is at least singularly compromised. We may continue to suppose that matter exists, and even that it is matter which provokes in our mind those events which we call our sensations; but we cannot know if by its nature, its essence, this matter differs from that of mind, since we shall be ignorant of all its properties. Our ignorance on this point will be so complete that we shall not even be able to know whether any state which we call mental may not be physical. The distinction between physical and mental will have lost its raison d'être, since the existence of the physical is necessary to give a meaning to the existence of the mental. We are brought, whether we like it or not, to an experimental monism, which is neither psychical nor physical; panpsychism and panmaterialism will have the same meaning.16

But this monism can be only transitory, for it is more in the words than in the thing itself. It is brought about by the terminology adopted, by the resolution to call mental all the phenomena that it is possible to know. Luckily, our speculations are not at the mercy of such trifling details as the details of language. Whatever names may be given to this or that, it will remain none the less true that nature will continue to present to us a contrast between phenomena which are flints, pieces of iron, clods of earth, brains—and some other phenomena which we call states of consciousness. Whatever be the value of this dualism, it will have to be discussed even in the hypothesis of panpsychism.17 As for myself, I shall also continue to make a distinction between what I have called objects of cognition and acts of cognition, because this is the most general distinction that can be traced in the immense field of our cognitions. There is no other which succeeds, to the same degree, in dividing this field into two, moreover, this distinction is derived directly from observation, and does not depend for its validity on the physical or mental nature of the objects. Here is, then, a duality, and this duality, even when it does not bear the names physical and moral, should necessarily play the same part, since it corresponds to the same distinction of fact.

In the end, nothing will be changed, and this second opinion must gradually merge into the one first stated by me, and of which I take the responsibility. We may, therefore, put it out of consideration.

I have mentioned a third opinion, stating that it appeared to me to be radically false. Outwardly it is the same as the last; looked at superficially it seems even confused with it; but, in reality it is of a totally different nature. It supposes that sensation is an entirely psychological phenomenon. Then, having laid down this thesis, it undertakes to demonstrate it by asserting that sensation differs from the physical fact, which amounts to supposing that we cannot know anything but sensations, and that physical facts are known to us directly and by another channel. This is where the contradiction comes in. It is so apparent that one wonders how it has been overlooked by so many excellent minds. In order to remove it, it will be sufficient to recollect that we do not know anything other than sensations; it is therefore impossible to make any distinction between the physical object and the object of cognition contained in every sensation. The line of demarcation between the physical and the moral cannot pass this way, since it would separate facts which are identical.

We can, therefore, only deplore the error of all those who, to express the difference between mind and matter, have sought a contrast between sensation and physical facts. Physiologists, with hardly an exception, have fallen into this error; when contemplating in imagination the material working of the brain, they have thought that between the movement of cerebral matter and sensation there was a gulf fixed. The comparison, to have been correct, required to be presented in quite another way. A parallel, for instance, should have been drawn between a certain cerebral movement and the act of consciousness, and there should have been said: "The cerebral motion is the physical phenomenon, the act of consciousness the psychical." But this distinction has not been made. It is sensation en bloc which is compared to the cerebral movement, as witness a few passages I will quote as a matter of curiosity, which are borrowed from philosophers and, especially, from physiologists.

While philosophers take as a principle of idealism, that the mental can only know the mental, physiologists take, as a like principle, the heterogeneity existing, or supposed to exist, between the nerve impression and the sensation. "However much we may follow the excitement through the whole length of the nerve," writes Lotze,18 "or cause it to change its form a thousand times and to metamorphose itself into more and more delicate and subtle movements, we shall never succeed in showing that a movement thus produced can, by its very nature, cease to exist as movement and be reborn in the shape of sensation...." It will be seen that it is on the opposition between molecular movement and sensation, that Lotze insists. In like manner Ferrier: "But how is it that the molecular modifications in the cerebral cells coincide with the modifications of the consciousness; how, for instance, do luminous vibrations falling upon the retina excite the modification of consciousness called visual sensation? These are problems we cannot solve. We may succeed in determining the exact nature of the molecular changes which take place in the cerebral cells when a sensation is felt, but this will not bring us an inch nearer to the explanation of the fundamental nature of sensation." Finally, Du Bois Reymond, in his famous discussion in 1880, on the seven enigmas of the world, speaks somewhat as follows: "The astronomical knowledge of the encephalon, that is, the most intimate to which we can aspire, only reveals to us matter in motion. But no arrangement nor motion of material particles can act as a bridge by which we can cross over into the domain of intelligence.... What imaginable link is there between certain movements of certain molecules in my brain, on the one hand, and on the other hand primitive, undefinable, undeniable facts such as: I have the sensation of softness, I smell the odour of a rose, I hear the sound of an organ, I see a red colour, &c...."

These three quotations show very conclusively that their authors thought they could establish the heterogeneity of the two phenomena by opposing matter to sensation. It must be recognised that they have fallen into a singular error; for matter, whatever it may be, is for us nothing but sensation; matter in motion, I have often repeated, is only a quite special kind of sensation; the organic matter of the brain, with its whirling movements of atoms, is only sensation. Consequently, to oppose the molecular changes in the brain to the sensation of red, blue, green, or to an undefined sensation of any sort, is not crossing a gulf, and bringing together things which cannot be compared, it is simply comparing one sensation to another sensation.

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1

L'Ame et la Corps.—Disagreeable as it is to alter an author's title, the words "Soul and Body" had to be abandoned because of their different connotation in English. The title "Mind and Body" was also preoccupied by Bain's work of that name in this series. The title chosen has M. Binet's approval.—Ed.

2

Étude experímentale de l'Intelligence. Paris: Schleicher.

3

Connaissance.—The word cognition is used throughout as the English equivalent of this, except in places where the context shows that it means acquaintance merely.—Ed.

4

J. S. Mill, An Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy, pp. 5 and 6. London. 1865.

5

A few subtle philosophers have returned to it, as I shall show later in chapter iv.

6

Thus, the perplexity in which John Stuart Mill finds himself is very curious. Having admitted unreservedly that our knowledge is confined to sensations, he is powerless to set up a reality outside this, and acknowledges that the principle of causality cannot legitimately be used to prove that our sensations have a cause which is not a sensation, because this principle cannot be applied outside the world of phenomena.

7

See p. 18, sup.—Ed.

8

I would draw attention to a recent volume by Gustave Le Bon, on Evolution de la Matière, a work full of original and bold ideas.

9

See [Note 1] on p. 3 .—Ed.

10

See p. 22, sup.—Ed.

11

See J. S. Mill's Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy, chap. x. p. 176, et. seq.

12

See p. 18, sup.—Ed.

13

See [Note 3], sup. on p. 15.—Ed.

14

The word "conscience" is one of those which has been used in the greatest number of different meanings. Let it be, at least, understood that I use it here in an intellectual and not a moral sense. I do not attach to the conscience the idea of a moral approbation or disapprobation, of a duty, of a remorse. The best example to illustrate conscience has, perhaps, been formed by Ladd. It is the contrast between a person awake and sleeping a dreamless sleep. The first has consciousness of a number of things; the latter has consciousness of nothing. Let me now add that we distinguish from consciousness that multitude of things of which one has consciousness of. Of these we make the object of consciousness. [Conscience has throughout been rendered "consciousness."—Ed.]

15

Ch. Renouvier et L. Prat, La Nouvelle Monadologie, p. 148.

16

An American author, Morton Prince, lately remarked this: Philosophical Review, July 1904, p. 450.

17

This Flournoy recently has shown very wittily. See in Arch. de Psychol., Nov. 1904, his article on Panpsychism.

18

This extract, together with the two subsequent, are borrowed from an excellent lecture by Flournoy, on Métaphysique et Physiologie. Georg: Geneva, 1890.